Live and Let Die
by ThirteenWishes
Summary: It was supposed to be a party, a day to just let go, but there was something else there.  Something in that forest, a pair of eyes watching from the shadows.  There was something hiding in the darkness that wanted them gone forever.
1. Chapter 1

**IMPORTANT AUTHOR'S NOTE**

**Did you know that if you lick the back of Dots, they'll stick to glass? Just a little fun fact.**

**This is based off of both the new promo and my old story, which was also called Live and Let Die (I deleted it, sorry. It wasn't that good anyways.)**

**Six Feet From the Edge is still my main story, so this one probably won't be updated as frequently. I'm just writing this because I'm in the Halloween spirit, and because I just got back from seeing Apollo 18 and I'm in the mood to write something vaguely creepy. This story won't be very long, anyways. Characters will most likely be very OOC.**

**I do not own Degrassi or any books, movies, songs, etc. that I reference/use in this story. I do own the "mystery character," and those of you who read the first Live and Let Die probably already know who she is.**

**By the way, the title of this story is taken from the Green Day song 21 Guns ("when it's time to live and let die, and you can't get another try, something inside this heart has died, you're in ruins"), not the James Bond movie.**

**And now… the story.**

000

Clare had to admit that she wasn't exactly thrilled by this whole camping-trip thing.

Her mother and Glen had decided to stay home, of course, but they'd pushed Clare into going to the cabin with Jake. They'd said that it would be a good _bonding experience _for them before the wedding.

_Oh, I think we've bonded enough already. You know, when he was shoving his tongue down my throat and all that._

And Jake, being a high school guy, immediately seized the chance to throw a party. Clare had lost count of how many people he had invited, and to be honest, she thought that he was an idiot. The cabin wasn't _that _big, and Clare knew that she would be stuck on cleanup duty after everyone left.

Oh, how lovely. Scrubbing teenage puke from the floor and washing sheets with mysterious sticky substances on them.

She couldn't _wait._

It was a two-hour drive to the cabin, and Clare wondered almost hopefully if anyone would really bother to make the trip. What would they get from it, anyways? Drunken truth-or-dare games and being kept up all night by obnoxiously loud crickets on steroids? She remembered that she had always hated this when she was a kid, and she didn't see how that could possibly change now.

Well, maybe she could hate it _more_. Jake had invited Alli, Jenna, KC, and Eli, to name a few names.

Alli and Clare had been drifting apart ever since Clare had started dating Eli and hanging out with him and Adam. They were still friends, just not best friends as they had once been. As for Jenna… Clare had done her best to put the past behind her, but that was hard to do when Jenna was constantly whining about everything. Yeah, she was pregnant at fifteen. That sucked, but it had been _her _decision to have sex. Yeah, KC cheated on her, but bitch, that was _karma_. The only time in the past, well, year or so when Clare had actually felt sorry for Jenna was when she gave Tyson up for adoption. She knew how much Jenna loved her son, and it couldn't have been easy.

But Jenna still majorly pissed Clare off.

Clare had been over KC for a long, long time. She wasn't jealous of Jenna or anything; far from it, actually. But it was still awkward, seeing him around. She still remembered the chaste kisses they'd shared, back when everything was all rainbows and butterflies, back before the drama of Degrassi had really impacted her life.

And Eli.

They were sort of friends now, but it was different. There wasn't the happy, friendly joking that they'd once shared, the relaxed and peaceful aura, because that could have been mistaken for flirting. Clare couldn't deny that she still had feelings for Eli, and she knew that he still had feelings for her.

So why was this so hard?

She wasn't ready for another relationship, not yet. She'd been through a boy who didn't care about her enough, a boy who cared about her too much, and the second she'd found her perfect neutral, her perfect rebound, he turned out to be her stepbrother-to-be.

She just couldn't catch a break.

Clare stared out of the window, watching the world fly by. Jake sat in silence behind the wheel; you could almost _feel _the tension between them. She was still attracted to him, of course, and she realized that in a few short weeks, she was going to be attracted to her _stepbrother_.

_Oh, my God._

But all feelings and respect she'd had for him had just flown out the window when he decided that the best thing to do would be to break up with her at _prom_. Clare didn't exactly have the best track record with school dances, did she?

Of course, she'd had it better than Adam. At least _she _hadn't been shot by Bianca's gangster boyfriend. Or… ex-boyfriend. Whatever.

Clare was thrilled that Adam was going to this stupid party thing, but that meant that she'd have to hang around Eli, too, and… well, she wanted to be friends with him. Of course she did. The problem was that she wanted to be _more _that friends with him, too, and that was just _confusing._

Maybe Jake was just a rebound.

"We're here," Jake told her shortly, yanking the keys out of the ignition and almost kicking the door open. Clare watched him with a sort of fascination, wondering what the hell had pissed him off this time. Maybe her simple presence was enough to irritate him these days.

And she was going to have to live with him until he hopefully went off to college.

_Wonderful._

The cabin seemed a little smaller than she remembered, and cleaner. It was pretty, she couldn't deny that, especially the forest surrounding it, the brightly colored leaves carpeting the ground, a few branches on each tree still coated with ones that stubbornly refused to fall. But Clare wasn't exactly the outdoorsy type, and she hoped that there would be no forced marches through that _pretty _forest.

They had a good hour or so before the high school partygoers started arriving, and Clare opened the door into the bedroom she used to occupy every time she went there as a kid. She lay down on her back on the bed, closing her eyes and pretending that the worst things in life were scraped knees and time-outs. Pretending that she was back in the good old days of childhood, before she knew what _divorce _and _bipolar disorder _meant.

She took a deep breath, let it out, and kept her eyes closed.

She had no idea that, not-so-far-away, out the window, someone was watching her.

000

"Remind me again why we're doing this?"

Adam rolled his eyes. "Because you _could _have fun. You _could _enjoy yourself. You _could _get back together with Clare."

_Not likely._

Eli did _want _to get back together with her, but… hell, it was complicated. Everything in life was complicated.

Scratch that. Everything in _his _life was complicated.

"_And _because I don't want to be stuck in a car with Katie, Bianca, and my brother for two hours, because that's a nasty fight waiting to happen."

"You do realize that I don't have a license anymore, right?" Eli checked. Apparently, what they thought was _attempted suicide _by crashing your hearse into a wall was reason to revoke your hard-earned license. Food for the thought.

"Which is why you're not going to get pulled over, right?"

"I'll try my best."

"Don't you have a fake license?"

"I have a fake ID," Eli corrected. "Which I haven't used in months and probably don't have on me."

Eli hadn't really used that thing for much, anyways. He didn't smoke and rarely drank, and his anti-social tendencies kept him far away from the nightclubs. He didn't think that he'd even picked up the thing since the beginning of his relationship with Clare, almost… five or six months ago now.

Things had changed so much since then.

"And I don't see why we're going to this lumberjack's cabin for some half-assed high school party."

"You know that Jake and Clare aren't together anymore, right?" Adam checked.

Eli sighed. "Yes, I know. This isn't about her."

"Dude, _everything _you do is about her."

_It's all about _you_, Clare._

"Whatever. Just shut up so I can concentrate, okay?" Eli snapped.

Yeah, everything _was _about Clare. It always was, and it always would be.

_Stop it! You're suffocating me!_

Even now, Eli flinched when he remembered her words. He was different now, he reminded himself. He was getting him for his bipolar disorder. He would get better, and then maybe he and Clare could be friends again. That was all he dared to ask for. Just friends, no matter how badly it hurt.

He was an emotionally unstable wreck.

Oh, joy.

Eli pulled into the long, winding driveway at the address Jake had given, well, everyone in tenth through twelfth grade. He kept his eyes trained directly on the road in front of him, controlling his breathing. He was getting better. He was dealing. He wasn't going to be okay.

But he was good at faking it.

Adam suddenly twisted around in his seat, as if trying to see something that had just past. "Shit, Eli, did you see her?"

"See who?" Eli asked, bringing the car to a stop.

"There was this girl, by the side of the road…" Adam rolled down his window and leaned out, looking behind them. "She's not there now. She was blond, I think, and… wearing these really weird, torn-up clothes."

Eli laughed. "Dude, you're seeing things."

"She was pretty hot, too."

"You're just proving my point." Eli tapped lightly on Adam's arm, which was still encased in the heavy cast from the shooting at prom. "Come on, dude, get your ass back in the car."

"My ass is in the car."

"Get your face back in the car, then."

Adam sighed and leaned back, rolling up the window. "Guess I was seeing things. But she was really, really hot."

"Yeah, whatever you say."

_Let's just get this over with._

000

The sky was darkening, such a deep shade of blue that it looked black until you stared intently at it for a few seconds. Clare realized that she was the only person at this entire party who was bored enough to stare at the sky for extended periods of time.

She hadn't been able to gather the courage to face Adam and Eli, and Alli had disappeared somewhere, so she was stuck with Jenna. To her credit, Jenna was a little less irritating than normal.

But only a little.

"_The stars are out."_

"_What's your wish?"_

"_If I tell you, then it won't come true."_

"_How cheesy would it be if I said that mine already has?"_

The two girls were walking along the edge of the forest, and Clare imagined a thousand pairs of dark, creepy eyes staring at her from the shadows. As much as she told herself that she was just being paranoid, she couldn't shake the feeling that something or someone was watching her, that there was something in there that she couldn't see.

_Remind me not to go into the woods tonight. For any reason._

She remembered when she'd watched that movie with Darcy, _Lady in the Water _or whatever. It hadn't really been that scary, but she'd had nightmares for a week. Clare never was one for horror movies; she preferred comedies, romantic comedies at that. It was the stereotype for girls, but she didn't care. She liked her movies funny, with a little bit of kissing and happy endings here and there.

In most horror movies, on the other hand, the main characters were torn to bits or eaten by a werewolf or something.

This seemed like the setting for a real-life horror movie.

_Um, God? Please don't let there be any werewolves in the woods. Thanks._

"Clare Bear? You okay?"

Clare snapped back to reality, turning to look at Jenna. "Yeah, I'm fine. Let's get back to the campfire."

000

The girl waits, watches.

Maybe she once had a name. She doesn't remember one now. She's been here, in this forest, for as long as she can remember.

No, that's not right, because she can't remember anything.

She watches these people. She waits for an opportunity.

They've come here, disrupted her safe haven, torn apart the peace of this place.

The girl closes her eyes. A slight smile ghosts over her lips as her hand reaches down to trace the handle of the knife sticking out of her boot.

But they'll be sorry.

Oh, yes. They'll be sorry.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Well, I hope this chapter's creepy enough. If it's not, it'll get better soon, I promise.**

000

"Jake? Alli?"

Clare knew that she shouldn't be freaking out.

After all, she wasn't dating Jake anymore. She didn't even _like _Jake very much anymore.

But watching him making out with the girl who used to be her best friend was just… _bizarre_. Hell, she _lived _with this guy, and they'd only broken up a month or so before. How long had this little fling been going on between them? They certainly seemed too cozy together for this to be the first time they'd tried to eat each others' faces.

Jake and Alli sprang apart, both turning to look at Clare with mortified expressions. "Hey, Clare," Jake mumbled, avoiding her eyes.

Alli's mouth was hanging open, her lips positioned in what seemed to be a permanent _O _of surprise. "C-Clare," she stuttered. "Um, we… we were just…"

_There's no reason to be angry. There's no reason to be angry._

There was, however, a reason to feel betrayed.

"Save it," Clare snarled. She didn't want to hear what Alli had to say.

_There's no reason to be angry…_

She turned and stalked away, her fists clenching. She didn't want to stay by that campfire for a single second longer; she felt like her skin was crawling, and she didn't want to do something stupid like punch Alli in the face.

She was _over _Jake. She was _way _over Jake. She'd probably never loved him in the first place.

So why was she so damned pissed off?

Maybe because the situation was familiar to her. Clare didn't know if KC had actually cheated on her or if he'd waited until after Clare dumped his sorry ass to knock up his perfect little Barbie cheerleader, but either way, she'd felt so betrayed by how a _friend _had taken her _boyfriend_.

Maybe Alli was the reason why Jake had broken up with her, or maybe it really was because of their parents.

Maybe Jake had cheated on her. Maybe he hadn't.

It didn't really matter anymore.

Clare glanced around, realizing that she was lost. Lost in the middle of that deep, dark forest.

And she still felt like she was being watched.

Clare thought she heard a noise and turned quickly, her eyes flying open and a gasp escaping her lips.

There was nothing there.

Another small sound, and she whipped around in circles, her heart pounding. It sounded almost like quiet footsteps, like something had _followed _her…

"Clare?"

Clare shrieked at the sound, leaping about ten feet in the air and stumbling backwards. Someone caught her before she could fall flat on her face, and she gripped that person's arms, closing her eyes tightly and taking deep breaths to try to calm her breathing and her heart.

"Um, are you okay?"

Clare opened her eyes and glared at him, letting go of his arm with one hand and smacking his shoulder. "Damn it, Eli, you really scared me!"

Eli smirked, glancing around. "Well, I admit that it's pretty creepy out here, but I'm hardly some scary monster."

"I… I felt like something was watching me. And… I heard something…"

"Which was probably me. I'm surprised you didn't see my flashlight, though." He waved the beam of light around a little, shining a spotlight on random trees. "But, see, there's nothing- _holy shit!_"

"What? _What?_" Clare turned quickly to see what the light had hit, but it was just an empty space between two trees.

"Nothing. I… I must be seeing things."

Clare narrowed her eyes at her ex-boyfriend; was he just trying to scare her? He looked freaked, and though he was a good actor, he wasn't _that _good.

"What did you see?" she demanded.

"Nothing," he repeated. "I'm just kind of paranoid right now. Adam said that he saw this girl on the way here, and I thought that I saw her just now, but…"

Clare frowned. "There can't be another girl here, unless she was invited to the party. There isn't another house for almost ten miles… well, except for one, but no one's lived there for years."

Oh, God, this was _exactly _like some cheesy horror movie.

_Calm down. It's not real._

Clare suddenly realized that she was _very _close to Eli, her body pressed against his and her hand still gripping his arms so tightly she knew that it must hurt, but she was too freaked out to move away. She was still shaking, her heart pounding from her little scare.

Eli laughed. "Well, come on. We should probably get back to the cabin."

"Yeah," Clare agreed, untangling herself from him and stepping away a little. "Do you, uh, know which way it is?"

"Nope. I was just following you."

Clare raised her eyebrows. "You stalking me or something, Goldsworthy?"

He shook his head. "You looked upset. I wanted to make sure you were okay."

It was the first casual conversation that they'd had in what felt like years, and she was enjoying every second of it. She'd missed this, this lighthearted bantering between them.

Of course, it could be called _flirting_, too.

Clare shoved the thought out of her mind. "I think that… um, this way, maybe?" She pointed in a random direction, and Eli rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, let's just wander off into the deep, dark, scary woods with no weapon other than a flashlight."

"You're assuming that we'll need a weapon?"

Eli smirked again. "Well, it doesn't hurt to be prepared, Blue Eyes. And I'd rather not get lost in this godforsaken forest."

"Well, then, what are we supposed to do?" Clare snapped, her patience thinning. They were lost alone in a strange forest, and she _still _felt like someone was watching her, someone other than Eli. The temperature was dropping rapidly, and she shivered, rubbing her arms in an attempt to warm herself.

"Honestly, I don't know."

000

Adam glanced out the window again, narrowing his eyes and searching the darkness for any sign of Eli or Clare. This damned place seemed to have no respect for the fact that it was supposed to be _summer_ and therefore warm, and the cold had driven everyone who decided to stay inside the cabin.

And Eli and Clare were _still _somewhere out there, lost in the forest.

Jake and Alli were practically sucking each others' faces off in the corner of the room; it was like they didn't even realize that they'd hurt Clare. Or maybe they knew that they had, and they just didn't care, too wrapped up in each other to notice the outside world.

Drew and Katie had "stepped out for a moment" as well, and Adam didn't want to think about exactly what they were planning to do. Bianca was sitting on the couch beside him, her head titled back slightly and her eyes half-closed. She looked pretty zoned out, and six months before, Adam would have thought that she was on something. But that was the Bianca of the past; she was actually a nice, funny girl, not to mention unbelievably gorgeous. She had apologized several times for her actions at the beginning of the year, as well as her small role in the shooting at prom, and Adam didn't see a reason why he shouldn't forgive her. He didn't blame her for most of it; most people freaked out at first when they discovered his secret, and she couldn't have known that Vince would bring a gun to prom.

And, yeah, he _might _like her a little more than he should. Not that a girl like Bianca DeSousa would ever go for a guy like Adam Torres. Especially because he honestly _couldn't _do anything physical and, let's face it, Bianca was a very physical girl.

The conversations of the others in the room created a sort of white noise, a mumbling background to Adam's thoughts.

"Where do you think they are?"

Adam turned to face Bianca, frowning. "Who?"

"Eli, Clare, Drew, Katie," Bianca listed, still staring up at the ceiling. "Where do you think they are?"

Adam glanced out the window again. There was still no sign of any of them. "I don't know," he admitted.

"It's getting cold out there."

"Yeah."

Bianca turned her head slightly to look at him. "You know, it's kind of creepy out there. When I was walking by the edge of the woods, I felt like someone was watching me or something. And a couple of times I thought I saw someone, but I wasn't sure."

Adam remembered the girl he thought he'd seen in the driveway on the way to the cabin, the blond one with the torn-up clothes. She'd looked like she'd been in the forest for a while, but it was probably just his mind playing tricks on him, right?

"Me too," he admitted.

"This girl," Bianca continued. "I thought I saw this girl, out of the corner of my eye. But I didn't recognize her, and I didn't get a good look at her. I think she was blond." She laughed lightly. "Freaky, huh?"

Adam's blood ran cold. _I think she was blond._

It was just a coincidence, nothing more.

_There's nothing out there._

No blond girl with dirty clothes. Nothing.

Nothing at all.

"Yeah," he agreed, keeping his voice steady. "Freaky."

000

"Eli, you're going the wrong way."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"I'm never wrong, Blue Eyes."

"You are this time. We're going the wrong way."

"Just shut up and follow me, okay?"

"You did _not _just tell me to shut up."

"Yeah, I did."

"So I should just follow you and starve to death out here?"

"Actually, I think we'd die of dehydration first- _ow_!"

"That's not funny!"

"So you felt the need to slap me?"

Clare narrowed her eyes, trying to ignore how cold she was. "Yeah, pretty much," she snapped, and them mumbled to herself, "Or maybe we'll freeze to death instead."

"You cold?" Eli asked.

She shrugged, struggling to stop her teeth from chattering. _What was your first clue?_ "A little," she admitted, shivering.

Eli sighed and took off his jacket, handing it to her. Clare stared at it for a few seconds, and then lifted her eyebrows at Eli.

"Well, I guess chivalry really isn't dead." Normally, she would have objected, but she was _freezing._

"You're welcome."

"Thanks, Eli. For… for everything."

He smirked again. Damn it, all he _did _was smirk. She'd forgotten how annoying that was, but in a way, she missed his stupid smirk. She missed when they'd just joke around all day long, back before everything, before Vegas Night and then the hoarding and Fitz's return… she missed the old days with Eli.

"Don't mention it, Clare. It's just a jacket."

_That's not what I meant._

"I- _oh!_ I know where we are!"

Eli raised his eyebrows in an unspoken question.

Clare pointed at the dead tree that his flashlight had illuminated. It looked like it had been struck by lightning or something, and there was a blackened, hollowed-out space inside. "Jake and I used to come here when we were kids. To the cabin, I mean. We'd walk out into the woods and use that tree as some sort of fort or something. He used to try to scare me with these really gross bugs." She reached out to take Eli's free hand without really thinking about what she was doing. "Come on, we're only about ten minutes away now."

She still couldn't shake the feeling that there was something else in the forest, but she told herself that she was just being paranoid.

000

The girl remembers Clare.

Oh, yes. She remembers Clare.

The blue-eyed girl used to be her best friend. She didn't know that, but seeing Clare walking through the woods, she remembers.

Not everything. She just remembers Clare.

She remembers how Clare left her, abandoned her, just like everyone else.

The girl's clothes, which she's been wearing for a few weeks- she stole them around a month ago- offer little protection against the cold, but she doesn't care. She's seeing red, she's so angry. This _Clare_, she left her. She _abandoned _her.

And now she's back.

The girl smiles, tracing the handle of the knife again.

_Not for long._


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Sorry it took so long to update! I don't really have any excuse besides laziness, writer's block, and my computer charger's annoying tendency to randomly disappear right when I need it.**

**I hope you guys like this chapter! Review please!**

**I do not own Degrassi, but I do own the… mystery character.**

000

She remembers heat.

Heat and red. Red and flickers of orange and yellow, eating and eating. Devouring everything, and so much heat. Blistering her skin, and she screamed. She remembers screaming. Heat and pain and screaming and running away. Away, away, away into the forest, into the green woods and the clear air and the escape.

Escape.

She can't escape now.

She stares through the leaves, through the night. There's a girl. A girl with hair that's probably light brown; she can't tell for sure, not in this light; walking with some guy.

Walking through _her _home. _Her _escape.

She's invading the only place that is safe.

The girl tightens her grip on the knife and smiles.

000

"Drew, I'm _cold_."

"Come on, don't you want a little… privacy?"

Katie hadn't exactly lost her virginity- not yet, anyways- but even though she knew that Drew wasn't the kind of guy who pressured girls into sex, she was still a little nervous about being completely alone with him in the middle of the night. Of course, that might be because they were wandering around in some dark forest that looked like the set of some cheap scary movie with only one flashlight.

"It's just creepy out here, that's all." Katie glanced around, shivering even though she was wearing Drew's jacket. "I feel like something's watching me."

"That would be me." Drew stepped closer, his amused eyes staring into hers and placing a soft, chaste kiss on her lips. "You look amazing in my clothes."

Katie smiled, leaning into him. "Seriously, though… can we go back soon?" She was really freaked out, though she wouldn't admit it. She was Katie Matlin, head of the school paper and soccer team, as well as soon-to-be president of the senior class. She was fearless.

At least, she was supposed to be.

Drew sighed. "All right, all right."

Katie cast one last glance around; it looked like something was moving in the shadows, like there was, in fact, something out there. She shook it off, telling herself that she was just seeing things. That it wasn't real. She was just freaked because, well, she was alone with her boyfriend in the middle of some godforsaken forest.

That was all.

There was nothing out there.

There _couldn't _be anything out there, right? They were alone. They were _alone._

She could hear something behind her, sounding like quiet footsteps, and she felt the icy grip of fear closing around her.

_There's nothing there, nothing there, nothing there…_

_Don't turn around…_

_There's nothing there…_

000

Bianca was pretty damned wasted.

Something told Adam that this was a pretty regular occurrence; her words were slurred, and she was a little loopy, her voice louder than it should have been and her train of thought exploding on the tracks, but she seemed to be used to it. She was leaning back against Adam's good shoulder, talking to him, to the ceiling, to the empty air, to herself, to everything and everyone.

He'd never been drunk before. Sure, he'd had a drink once or twice, but he never really could get over the God-awful taste of that stuff. It made him feel like a little kid, even though Drew swore that he was just being smart, that you have no control over what you say when you have too much to drink and it isn't worth the hangover, the barfing your guts out the next day. Still, Adam wondered what it was like. Fiona had told him that you didn't get addicted to the _taste _of alcohol; it was the _feeling _you were hooked on.

So there he was, listening to his brother's incredibly gorgeous ex-girlfriend ramble on and on about something completely random, casting a few glances out the window just to check and see if any of the wandering Romeo and Juliet wannabees had made it back yet.

That was what his life had come to.

And then the scream.

It was loud, high-pitched; a girl's scream, and Adam automatically leaped to his feet, his eyes widening as he stared out the window into the darkness as all conversation inside the cabin died. The frantic sound was abruptly cut off, leaving the woods outside just as silent.

"What the _hell _was that?"

Everyone started talking at once, voices rising in fear and panic. A few of them laughed it off, saying that it was just Clare or Katie or one of the other girls trying to scare them, but most of them were pretty freaked, Adam included. That hadn't sounded fake; he doubted that even the best actress could have pulled off something like that. This scream was filled with pure terror, and he could feel his own panic welling up in his chest.

"Everyone _shut the fuck up_!"

That was Jake, shouting over the mixture of all those voices blending and mixing together. The cabin was silent again, and Adam could feel Bianca's fingers locking around his arm, holding on to him tightly. He was too spooked to shrug her off, and even if he hadn't been, he probably wouldn't have.

Outside, there was a sort of crashing sound, and Adam felt his entire body tense, the fear threatening to burst out. The noise grew closer and closer, louder and louder, and then there was a sudden pounding at the door.

"Let me in! Oh, God, _let me in_!"

That was Katie's voice, frantic and unsteady, nearly shrieking.

Someone opened the door, and Katie almost fell inside. She looked like hell, her eyes wide, her entire body shaking, her clothes torn and bloody. Her hair was filled with leaves, and the first signs of a bad bruise were showing around her eye. She collapsed, sobbing hysterically.

"What happened?"

"Are you okay?"

"Where's Drew?" Adam demanded. It wasn't that he didn't care about Katie, but, well, Drew was his _brother_, and what the _hell _had happened to Katie?

This was way, _way _too weird, like a nightmare or something. Some horror movie that made you jump and cringe, but fiction. It couldn't possibly be real.

"Katie?" Bianca, of all people, crouched down beside her, laying her hand on her shoulder. "Katie, what happened?" Her voice was soft, comforting. Understanding, like she was somehow coherent despite the effects of the alcohol.

What the _hell_?

"T-there's something o-out there," Katie stuttered. "Oh, God, there's s-something out there."

000

"See? There it is! I told you so!" Clare exclaimed triumphantly, pointing towards the lights of the cabin. She turned towards Eli, grinning. "And to think you doubted me, Goldsworthy."

"I'm _deeply _sorry."

"You should be." Clare hopped up and down, shivering. Despite Eli's jacket, she was still freezing, and she knew that he had to be, too. "Come _on_, Eli."

"Remind me to never go on a walk with you again, Blue Eyes."

"Why would that be?"

"Because I'd rather not be lost in some godforsaken forest that seems to think that it's January instead of August ever, ever again, thank you very much."

Clare rolled her eyes and marched straight up to the door, testing the knob with one hand. Why the hell was it locked? She sighed and knocked loudly, calling irritably, "Hey, guys, let me-"

The door swung open, and someone's hands grabbed her upper arms, pulling her quickly inside and slamming the door shut behind her. Clare almost fell to the floor, managing to regain her balance. She turned around quickly, her eyes wide with shock. "Jake! What the _hell_?"

"Look, Clare, there's-"

"Let Eli in," Clare ordered. She glanced around, noticing that everyone was kind of on edge, bodies tense and fists clenching nervously. "What's wrong with you guys, anyways?"

Jake opened the door briefly, slamming it shut behind Eli and locking it. Eli rolled his eyes, leaning back against the wall. "Thanks, guys," he grumbled dryly. "I feel _really _welcome."

"What's wrong with you guys?" Clare repeated.

Jake shifted nervously, and Clare glanced around again. Adam was sitting on the couch, avoiding eye contact. Fiona and Imogen were sitting together, but they were silent. Hell, everyone was silent. It was even weirder than the feeling of being watched out there in the woods, and that was saying a lot.

"Katie was attacked," Adam spoke up finally. "And Drew's missing." He lifted his eyes to meet Clare's for the first time since she'd walked in. "Guys… there's something out there."


End file.
